I have become aware of a counter-intuitive truth. In a dark location, bring a few lights. In a bright location, bring a lot more lights.

To control light in a dark location, you can add a little light and create a lot of drama. Properly controlled the shadows work for you and you can paint light where you wish with relatively modest lighting sources. I have only used a candle sometimes to light a scene.

To control light in a bright location, you need to bring a lot of powerful light because you already have light everywhere. To create darker areas you have to add a significant amount of light to the scene to create a difference between areas of the scene to create drama.

Most of these shots were lit with four speed lights firing at full power though an octobox, soft box. Even with that much power I was only able to create subtle, but important difference between the light on my model and the light on the rest of the scene.